Whimsy and Wonder
by loomweaver
Summary: The Wizarding Britain is a far more dreary and down-to-earth place than one could imagine. AU.


Arthur Weasley leaned back and spun in his office chair, gazing at the ceiling, his arms behind his head, as he lamented his predicament.  
He was bored out of his mind.

While the work required of his position at the Muggle Technology and Magitek Artefacts Department was anything but boring, today had been a slow day, with most of his time spent on checking over the designs and approving patents for new Magitek devices that mixed the arcane with the mundane.  
As far as Arthur knew, the term was first introduced into the common parlance back during the Secession era (or the Victorian era, as Muggles called it), when the Wizarding Britain separated from the rest of the country, Obliviating the unwitting populace and erasing any traces of their existence from Muggle history.  
The origins of the term weren't exactly common knowledge, but his position as the Head of the Department meant that, like any executive manager who knew how to effectively delegate jobs, he was left with way too much free time on his hands and not nearly enough incompetence to waste time by pestering his subordinates, which meant he usually spent most of his time delving deep into the vast library that his predecessor, fond of hoarding knowledge, left him.

The comfort of his chair was near-impossible to leave, but he managed. Arthur stepped out of his office and was immediately assaulted with the sounds of bustling activity, which he had been shielded from by the thick walls up until now.

"Jenkins!", Arthur called out calmly, but loudly towards one of the cubicles, prompting a wiry man in a suit and round glasses that barely fit on his nose to raise his head.

"Yes, Mr. Weasley?", the man replied nervously, as if he was a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar.

"I'll be heading out for lunch," Arthur said, ignoring the man's shifty looks, "If there are any priority calls on my ball, forward them to my portable. Hold the fort, will you?"

"Of course, Mr. Weasley."

After a brief stroll through the labyrinthine halls of the Wizarding Administration building and a short walk through the foggy London streets, he finally reached his destination.  
The pub looked like any other of its kind, and frankly, it was. Sure, there were numerous establishments that catered specifically to the magical community around the Wizarding Administration, but frankly speaking, Arthur found that most of them, despite all the advantage magic gave them over the Muggle joints, couldn't even serve a decent plate of fish'n'chips.  
Besides, he liked the ambiance of the place.  
As he placed his order at the bar counter, he suddenly noticed a familiar face sitting at one of the tables. A grin slowly crept onto Arthur's face, and he casually strolled up to the woman's table, taking a seat in front of her, the woman in question too engrossed in the contents of her crystal marble to notice Arthur until he was already seated.

"Arthur!", she yelped, surprised by the man's sudden appearance. "One day you'll scare me to death."

"Do I really look so terrible, Amelia?", he chuckled in response. "And here I thought I am still the dashing young man I was twenty years ago."

"You obviously haven't looked in the mirror lately then," Amelia Bones, the Head of Information Security Department, huffed indignantly, "How's Molly?"

"Same old, same old", Arthur waved her off. "You know how it is, having seven kids and living with five of them. It's a bit of a trying experience, to say the least."

"I'll never understand your obsession with children", she said, glancing quickly over towards the crystal marble in her hand. "Have you heard Malfoy's latest address to the Wizarding Parliament yet?"

"I'm not really interested in the rich pillock's rants, to be honest. But, I guess, he's the most likely Parliament Chairman candidate right now", Arthur admitted, shrugging his shoulders, before gesturing at Amelia. "Alright, pass it over."

He took hold of the marble - or rather, the portable crystal ball - and suddenly, the face of Lucius Malfoy appeared in the reflection, as Malfoy's voice filled Arthur's ears, audible to him and him only.

_...they claim they fight for equal rights, but once one takes into account the sheer diversity of the sapient Magical Creatures, the whole idea of equality goes out of the window. How can a centaur or a giant be equal to a wizard? The differences are just too vast to even consider the idea. What they really want isn't equal rights, but rather, equal respect. But we can't just give our respect freely, with no contribution from their side. _  
_The goblins manage our financial system. The house-elves help us in our day-to-day lives. And they've done that for centuries. In return, we've protected their rights and given them ample respect where it was due. But what do werewolves contribute to our society? The question they should be asking isn't "what the government can do for us?", but rather..._

Unwilling to listen to the recording any longer, Arthur handed the marble back to Bones and rubbed his eyes in exasperation.

"Passionate, isn't it?", Amelia said, her expression distant. "It seems like he has the overwhelming support of the Parliament."

"His rhetoric isn't entirely wrong", Arthur noted quietly, making Amelia's eyebrows jump in surprise. "But I know the man better than most. A crooked, corrupt opportunist to the marrow of his bone."

"I wouldn't have thought you would agree with the man's words considering how much you hate him."

"Oh no, the idea that different races must be integrated into the Wizarding society in different ways is quite sound. So is the idea that a citizen must contribute to his country," Arthur elaborated, explaining himself. "That's exactly why it's dangerous. A reasonable ideology, twisted by the man's self-serving logic, until there is nothing left of the original concept."

The heavy mood was starting to set in at the table, but then, it was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Arthur's order.  
Lightening up, he dug into his plate, fishing out a sizable piece of deep-fried cod, which he then promptly stuffed into his mouth.

"Say what you want about Muggles, but they cook far better than any of those government-sponsored canteens we've got in the Administration building," Amelia said, watching the Weasley patriarch scarf down the contents of the plate in front of him. "Sometimes I wonder if they would be better off without us."

"They would," Arthur admitted freely. "Our relationship with the Muggle world is pretty much entirely parasitic."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Amelia frowned, wrinkling her nose.

"No, no, Amelia, I mean it," the man gestured with the fork full of chips in his hand. "I guess you wouldn't really know the fine details I'm privy to thanks to my unique position, but, trust me, every single notable Wizarding invention of the last few decades? Concept stolen from Muggles, then iterated upon and reproduced via arcane means."

"Really? I don't really believ-" Amelia tried to interject, but there was no stopping the avalanche of words that was Arthur Weasley when he talked about Muggle technology and Magitek.

"Less than a hundred years ago, we couldn't imagine using crystal balls for country-wide announcements, much less using them for entertainment programming.  
Less than seventy years ago, we couldn't imagine crystal balls being used for global communication - sure, two-way mirrors existed for ages, but connecting any random pair of mirrors? Impossible, right?  
Less than thirty years ago, we couldn't imagine that precise miniaturization of the runes we used would be possible, that the complexity of the daemons inside would reach the degree we have today, allowing to reduce the crystal balls to a fraction of their size," he paused for a moment, catching his breath, "Do you really think we did all of that on our own?"

"We stole those ideas from Muggles?"

"Not only did we steal them, Amelia, we also Obliviated those we stole it from, to artificially delay the introduction of the technology in the Muggle world until we've had an implementation of our own", Arthur gestured in exasperation, "And that's not even limited to technology either. We copied their fashion, their architecture, their medical advances, their ideologies. We did it and then we made them forget, until the time we were ready to move on, time and again. Here, in London, we live among them, and yet we never give them anything back. We only take, and take, and take."

He looked at Amelia, his expression grim, which looked almost comical, considering he was still wielding a fork full of chips in his hand that went completely untouched throughout his rant.

"And you know the funny thing about technology? Have I told you about the patent samples MACUSA had sent over to us a few weeks ago thanks to our collaboration agreement? The ideas people come up with there are insane.  
Imagine what we have right now with the crystal marbles. You talk to someone, you finish the dialogue, and then it's effectively gone unless either of participants bothered to record it, right? Oh, and of course, we use it for news and entertainment programming, but, again, it's effectively gone unless we bother to record it.  
And now imagine this whole vast network of sorts not only transmitting massive amounts of information, but also _storing_ it. The sum of all the Wizarding communications that have ever taken place, the sum of all the Wizarding knowledge, all in your pocket."

Amelia seemed to consider his words. She blinked. Then she considered his words again, with far more care this time, and her expression turned distant.

"Yes, that was pretty much my own reaction when I read the patent and the realization finally set in," Arthur snorted, finally deciding to take a bite of his rapidly cooling food. "And the funny thing is, the idea was initially laid out in a military Muggle patent, though, admittedly, it was labeled _top secret_."

"So what do you suggest?", Mrs. Bones asked, raising one of her brows, shaking off the shock of just how much such an idea could change the society at large. "That our society is completely and utterly creatively bankrupt?"

"I don't actually think so", he waved her off. "In my opinion, it's all a matter of statistics, really. There are almost seven billion of humans currently on Earth, and the Wizarding populace throughout the entire world would be lucky to amount to a hundredth of a percent of that. Imagine all seven billion of said people with their daily struggles, looking for solutions that would ease their lives, all without the convenient crutch of having a wand."

"I see," Amelia added reluctantly. "I must admit, that little impromptu speech of yours was no less passionate than the one Malfoy came up with."

"I've had the time to dwell on it, I suppose", Arthur responded humorlessly. "Uh, sorry about that, actually. Sometimes, it all just spills out of me."

"No, no, as the Head of Information Security Department, I've found your perspective quite... enlightening."

Arthur blinked silently, unsure whether to take the comment as honest praise or something a bit more sinister.

"I better get going", he finally settled on something neutral to respond with, shoving the empty plate away and standing up from the table. "Molly must be going out of her mind by now. Actually, I don't want to trouble you, but have you got any Floo Powder on you?"


End file.
